282 THE rilESENT evolution of man — PHYSICAL 



It is clear from the foregoing that the conditions 

 favourable to the tubercle bacillus have on the whole 

 been increasing in civilized countries for a very long 

 time ; in England for at least twenty centuries, and we 

 know not for how much longer. It is calculated that, 

 at the present day, at least one-seventh of the total 

 number of deaths is due to its agency; but it is death- 

 dealing to a vastly greater extent under circumstances 

 which are even more favourable to it than such as 

 normally obtain. For instance, in jDrisons and some 

 barracks where the inmates are crowded together, and 

 their vitality reduced from various causes, mental and 

 physical, and where strong draughts of fresh air are 

 usually absent, the death-rate from tuberculosis is 

 enormous. 



" Phthisis in Prisons. — Consumption prevails in prisons 

 to a truly disastrous extent. I take the following 

 statistical data from an excellent article on the subject 

 by Baer : In the United States prisons, from 1829 to 

 1845, the mortality from phthisis was 12*82 per 1000 

 ])risoners at Philadelphia, and at Auburn and Boston 

 9"8[) and 10'78 respectively ; in Baltimore prison it was 

 CI per cent, of the mortality from all causes. In the 

 French prisons, particularly those in which long terms 

 of penal servitude are worked out, the death-rate from 

 phthisis amounts to between 30 and .50 per cent, of the 

 mortality from all causes. In Dutch prisons it reaches 

 the same height ; in the Danish convict prisons it 

 amounted in 1863-9 to 39 per cent, of all deaths; over 

 the whole of the prisons of the Austrian Empire in 

 1877-80 it was 61*3 per cent.; and in the nine large 

 convict prisons in Bavaria from 18G8 to 1875 it was 

 88"2 per cent. In the penal establishments of 

 Wurtemburg, according to Cless, the yearly average of 

 deaths from phthisis from 1850 to 1859 was 24 per 

 1000 ; while from 1859 to 1870, in consequence of an 

 improved diet, it fell, as we have seen, to 8 per 1000, 



